Zynga Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Zynga had asked for a case submission (Pick any product and increase its revenue by 5%)so first few questions were based on that
I had suggested for monetization by introduction of new feature and questions revolved around that feature.Why do you think people will pay for it? How can you use data to justify if such a feature is required? Be very specific w.r.t to defining customer journey and what are the data points that you will collect through the journey to verify feature requirement before you build it

Final question was, give a 2 min pitch for this feature to your senior and
how you will convince your bandwidth crunched technical resource to build this
feature

Further, he gave additional problem solving of an e-commerce platform. Bounce rate of an ecommerce website if up by 20%, what do you think is the reason.
Structure is very important here. Be well versed with the e-commerce funnel and which KPIs you will look at to know what is going on. I started by asking the device type questions (Mobile vs Desktop), he said the bounce rate is in mobile app and not website. Further I asked for a trend (as in for how long we see this increment). To this he mentioned that the bounce rate has increased suddenly in one day span. Post this I went into the ecommerce funnel and tried to identify from which page customers were leaving the application. Once that was narrowed down, I asked for has there been any UI changes in this one-day span. It turned out that technical team had done some UI changes because of which few call to action buttons were not visible on the mobile screen (less than 4inch screen).

• Q1. The interview started with a round of introduction. Behavioral questions, tell me about yourself? Why PM? Life goals? Situations where you have failed? Biggest ...read more
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• Q2. Further, there was a series of puzzle. He asked 3 puzzles and gave only 2 min per puzzle to solve. 1st was a 25 horses puzzle, 2nd was, 3rd was
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• Q3. Lastly, he devoted around 45 min to product thinking. Gave multiple cases back to back. 1st case was to monetize WhatsApp.
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• Q4. Biggest success of life?
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• Q5. Gave multiple cases back to back. 1st case was to monetize WhatsApp.
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• Q1. . The interview started with a round of introduction. Behavioral questions, tell me about yourself? Why PM? Life goals? Situations where you have failed? Bigges...read more
  Add Answer
• Q2. Further, there was a series of puzzle. He asked 3 puzzles and gave only 2 min per puzzle to solve. 1st was a 25 horses puzzle, 2nd was, 3rd was
  Add Answer

Candy crush is seeing a steep drop in the number of users between level 6 and 7.What can be the causes?
The difficulty level (too high in level 7) or fatigue (people are getting bored/tired by the time they reach level 7)

What test would you perform to find the cause?
Make the difficulty of level 7 same as level 6. If we see the same pattern, it would be due to fatigue

What's another way to do the test?
Replace level 5 with level 7. If the problem is difficulty, we would now see a drop between level 5 and 6.

Amazon saw a very steep decrease in revenue today.What would be the first question you would ask? Answer to that question should lead to 2 different approaches.
Was there a drop in number of users visiting the site? If yes, we need to check why users did not visit amazon for their purchases. If no, we need to check why they purchased less as compared to regular amount.

There was no drop in the DAU. Nothing external. No change in functionality of the site. Now how will you proceed?
Trace the user journey:

1) Lands on the home page (we know the user has visited)

2) Types in the search box or clicks on one of the categories or offers

3) Lands on results page (list of products, filters, etc.)

4) Clicks on filters to narrow down the results or clicks on an item

5) Lands on the product details page and selects buy now or goes back

6) Cart and Payment pages

There was a drop in users reaching the product details page. What would be your thought process (general idea not specific to a product category)?
Means users are reaching the results page but not going forward. Factors: Relevance and Product Descriptions.

Evaluate each one of them to check if something has changed Relevance: Clicks on first page of results? Position of the clicked item in the list? Navigation to 2nd page? Usage of filters? - Change in these statistics can tell us if the results were relevant to what user was looking for.
Product Description: Name, Short desc, Reviews, Amazon fulfilled, prices - Check if any of these factors have changed for the category that would be facing the problem.

A game where you get to dress up avatars using different apparels, jewelry, etc. As creativity is subjective, how will you judge the work of players and build a points system?
I don’t fully remember my answer, but following were some of the points I made: • Let players judge each other's work • Provide incentives for players to judge as many avatars as possible • Show them two avatars and let them pick the best one. The picked one gets points. This provides a frame of reference for players to judge.

Per day revenue of Swiggy in Hyderabad. Puzzles: 2 ropes of different lengths and non-uniform cross sections/density. Each takes 1 hr to burn. Measure 45 mins. 1 ant on each vertex of a triangle. Each can go along any of the two sides connected to the corner. Find the probability that none of the ants collide.
: (Dos and Don’ts, What went wrong.. , What went right.. etc.) Interviewer was pretty chill and very helpful. Whenever I was going in the wrong direction, he was asking me questions that can help me get back on track. Also, as they provided multiple cases, don’t worry if you screw up one case. So be calm and take your time to answer the question. They were looking to understand how you think, and not for a structure from any book.

Did you clear the round?
Yes

• Q1. . The interviewer first asked what game do I play in real life. I said table tennis. He then asked me to design a mobile game for it.
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• Q2. Design a mobile game for it.
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• Q3. Draw the wireframes.
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• Q4. Once a person owns all the bats, he will stop paying as we cannot keep adding bats every month. What can you do?
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• Q5. . Every month you are seeing a drop in the revenue from the app. How will you get to the problem?
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• Q6. I was told that conversion rates are decreasing. What will you do?
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• Q7. Q. How will you go about designing a subscription based model?
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• Q8. Did you clear the round?
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Questions based on case study submitted ( Choose an existing app and increase revenue by 5% for existing users) and resume

Why did you choose MakeMyTrip for the case submission?

Why can the feature fail?

Resume based questions

Puzzle - I have a Mathematical logic in my mind, and I would give you three numbers that satisfy that logic. You cannot ask me questions but can only give me three more numbers to which I would reply ‘yes’ if the numbers satisfy the logic and ‘no’ if they do not. You can ask unlimited number triplets, but you have only one shot in solving the logic. The numbers are 2,4,6. (E.g., If I say 3,6,9, the interviewer will respond as ‘yes’)
The numbers are in ascending order ( The key here is to eliminate all possibilities and not jump to conclusion)

Three ants are sitting on the three corners of an equilateral triangle. Each moves at constant speed and can independently move either in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction. If they start at the same time find the probability of collision

Design an online chess game. How will you monetize it? – Suggest five ways. How will you increase retention? How will you increase engagement?

Why do you think most games have launched a system where they allow users to buy coins through which they can make in-game purchases rather than allowing users to purchase those items directly?

Amazon’s daily revenue has fallen by 20%. Find the root cause.

In Farmville, we organize a seasonal sale during Halloween and Christmas where we sell season specific game items such as Christmas tree, Halloween pumpkins which can be added to the farm. The revenue generated through sale in Halloween was $300,000. Now during Christmas sale, we plan to sell the following in-game items: Reindeer, Christmas tree and Santa statue. The pricing and sales strategy lie in your hands. Suggest a strategy to increase revenue to $1,000,000 during Christmas.

Imagine you are the PM of Dota-2, what do you think is the most important “game-metric” that improved after the launch of Battle Pass. ( The question specific to Dota 2 was asked because I had mentioned I was a Dota2 gamer in my resume.)

• Q1. Case: Feature to increase revenue 5%
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• Q2. Tell me about yourself
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• Q3. Run me through the case solution
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• Q4. You notice the revenues have been declining for FIFA over the past week. What would you do as a PM?
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• Q5. What are the possible causes of DAU decreasing?
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• Q6. What could be reasons for revenue/users decreasing?
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• Q7. What would be the effect on metrics if you were to double the XP received per match?
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• Q8. What are the ways by which you can increase the purchase/spend on the app?
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Graph based- level based games-users playing suddenly drop at level 6
For this round, try to show the breadth of thinking by coming up with multiple features and solutions. Also discuss the priority. Having some knowledge of mobile games could help understand some questions better but it is not a MUST. You canask for explanation or clarifications on what the flow of the game is and the interviewer would provide the same.

Puzzle-ant at every corner of an equilateral triangle. What is the probability that 2 ants clash if all the ants start moving simultaneously in either direction?

Design a scoring mechanism to decide winner of a game based on outfit design (creativity is the criterion)

• Q1. Questions about zynga games, gamify an app to increse user engagement, puzzles, changes for words with friends to increase revenue by 5%
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• Q2. Changes for words with friends to increase revenue by 5%
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• Q1. Changes for farmville for christmas. Identify customer segment and design a celebrity based games. Describe the core loop of the game. Some puzzles
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• Q2. Describe the core loop of the game
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